


The Familiar Sting (of the Wood-Cutter's Swing)

by ella1673



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, IT WASN'T MEANT TO TURN OUT LIKE THIS, M/M, POV - Mary Morstan, Post-Reichenbach, Reunions, Third Person POV, hipster!Mary Morstan, i don't know what this is, written pre series 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ella1673/pseuds/ella1673
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, so Mary knows she's not looking perfect, but... She's had a long day, okay? </p>
<p>John Watson remains staring at her and this time Mary can't stop her hand acting on her nervous tick and she anxiously smooths her dark curls, straightening her new waist-length dark winter jacket and hopes her purple dress doesn't have paint on it. She did so want to make a good first impression </p>
<p>(Or John post-reichanbach as told by Mary Morstan)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Familiar Sting (of the Wood-Cutter's Swing)

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAH MY FIRST BETA READ FIC!
> 
> Many thanks to the lovely, wonderful theconsultingdragonlord   
> (who needs to teach me how to put links in the notes...)

Okay, so Mary knows she's not looking perfect, but... She's had a long day, okay? Her boss has been a fucking idiot, trying to explain his choice of putting Monet and Münche in the same room ( _who does that?_ ) and then he had her running around after this 'missing' painting, sending her up and down those floors _five fucking times_ only to find it hadn't even been shipped yet, so maybe she had just needed to de-stress by a quick work on one of her paintings, but she wasn't that late, was she? Mary straightens her hand quickly as she realises her hand is fumbling nervously around the hem of her skirt and hopes desperately that her apology had sounded a little more coherent than her mental tirade.

 

John Watson remains staring at her and this time Mary can't stop her hand acting on her nervous tick and she anxiously smooths her dark curls, straightening her new waist-length dark winter jacket and hopes her purple dress doesn't have paint on it. She did so want to make a good first impression - well first proper impression. They've met once before, at Molly Hooper's birthday, but all Mary can really remember is being shit-faced and rambling about the role of scientists in art to a very understanding listener.

 

But right before John snaps out of his daze, Mary realises he's not looking at her in distaste but rather with... love? admiration? lust? Mary knows the Greeks will have a word for it when she gets home.

 

John does snap out if it, with an adorable shake of his head that makes Mary want to cuddle him and fuck him right there on the table, and rises

 

"Hi! No, don't worry about it! I got here late anyway, worried you were going to yell at me!" he smiles hesitantly at Mary, eyes ghosting over her again. He rises awkwardly, gesturing to the chair

 

"take a seat!" he says and Mary smiles, does as he wants.

 

The rest of the date is perfect, though his eyes sometimes gravitate to her boobs, covered up by her favourite blue scarf, but he makes up for it by making her laugh and gallantly walking her to her door.

 

Mary chalks it up as one if the better dates in her life.

 

The rest of their dates go well too, and it's like he's known her all his life - like when he comes in and finds her painting he compliments the thing she's proud of (her feathering brushstrokes building up a complex melge of colour which an image is glimpsed at) and doesn't make any pretentious remarks or anything.

 

He's amazing and he _gets_ her. He gets her whole slightly loopy, lax life, he gets the way she feels slightly cheated out of something which she has no idea. He gets her brushing over social conventions because _who the fuck really cares?_ and he can smooth over everything she does like he's put her on Photoshop and airbrushes a picture for the world to see and lets her keep the real one, the slightly blurry, off centred one for her.

 

John Watson gives her the first Holiday in a relationship where she can just sit in front of her paintings and he just lets her; sits near her and reads, or writes, gets up and tidies close to her but not too close to her, brings her good and tea and _actually makes her consume them._

And gradually Mary realises that she never _let_ John Watson in - she just found him one day, smoothing loose edges, and she is incapable of telling when he became a part of her. She finds she can tell him how her mother's suicide really fucked her, and her A-Levels, up, but she thinks she needs to stop using her death as an excuse for everything gone wrong in her life and she thinks she glorifies her in her memory and doesn't know if she truly has an untainted memory. (John comes away from that conversation weirdly silent and he seems contemplative for weeks after) About how her first boyfriend splitting up with her after he couldn't cope with her mother's suicide turned her into a serial dater. About how she hates the taste of alcohol, but loves getting drunk.

 

She knows he's always the one there for her, but he always seems so perfect. She ... not _cherishes_ , not quite, those times when she can solder over the chinks that bloom in his sewn on armour. She learns to tuck her arm beside his when he has nightmares, so he can feel her warmth and know he's not alone, but doesn't feel boxed in. She learns to make him tea that next morning and take him out to dinner in the following weeks. She learns to make sure she doesn't ramble on those nights when he comes back from meeting Greg for a drink. She knows who Greg is, but she has no idea how John knows him (probably through Molly) and she doesn't know why meeting him makes John sad, but she knows he needs those evenings.

 

Mary finds out why about 9 months after they get together, 6 months after they start living together. She comes back from a painting class to find her darling John a drunken mess on the floor. So she cares for him like he does for her, and that's how she finds out about Sherlock.

 

Not _find out_ , find out - she does _read_ newspapers after all, especially when they can inspire such a beautiful painting which Mary decides to never show John - but finds out that John was his friend. She finds out about this wonderful madman that leapt around a London battlefield and did the most marvellous, genius things, and was the best man her darling had ever known. She finds out how her John thinks Sherlock fixed him, and she wonders (later, much later, for even she's not that callous) if she's John's attempt at doing what Sherlock did to him.

 

Mary doesn't mention it afterwards, for which her darling seems most grateful, but about 2 weeks later she leaves some photos of the 'I believe in Sherlock Holmes' movement and he pays her back with the best shag she's had in years.

 

Her darling John proposes on their 1 year anniversary, in that same resteraunt, and Mary really does leap out of her seat and nearly commit an act of indecency. Nearly, but they're thrown out anyway and they walk back giggling.

 

Mary supposes the supports for her fantasy are erected that night as they crash through the door and turn on the lights to a dark shape with curly hair.

 

It's the only time Mary has ever heard a word sound both so hopeful and so _so_ broken, but at her darling's

 

"Sherlock -", Mary immediately sobers up and lets the rose tinted scales fall from her eyes.

 

Sherlock has only eyes for John, and he says only

 

"Hello John", before John's fists sail round into the hard planes of his body. The genius doesn't do anything, just takes it, so it's up to Mary to throw herself forward and drag John back to a safe distance, before she goes to make tea.

 

She takes far longer than really could be justified, but she knows both of then won't mind. She takes a moment to lean her head against the cool glass covering the cabinets, her ring scraping unfamiliarly on the granite. For a moment she despises Sherlock for his timing, but then she knows she will love him, for darling John loved him.

 

Mary carries the tea back on a painted tray, but she pauses in the doorway. Sherlock and John are sitting at opposite ends of the sofa and it's then that she realises John fixed her because that's what he does - he heals the scars outcasts carry. She gets that from one look in Sherlock's eyes, one look at his devotion to her darling doctor.

 

John calls her into the room and she places the tea down, but says she needs to finish a painting. John protests, but not much and Mary knows she made the right choice.

 

Sherlock stays with them that night and the night after and Mary doesn't mind, lets John bring it up.

 

But it's dinner in the second week, when John just makes some remark, that Mary couldn't for the life of her repeat, that she realises. It hurts, but to be honest she thinks she knew for 3 months. She finishes dinner and goes through the rest of the evening, but in her head she knows that if life really went like a fairytale, something will make her realise she and John want completely different things, or something. But she knows they don't. Not completely different.

 

She feels a little morbid when she realises the next literary device for people like her; glancing the wrong way when crossing the street and making one final painting in blood, so a few weeks later, John's working a weekend and Sherlock nips out to do things to a corpse, she folds her clothes into a bag and paints him a note against a black tree and a sunset.

 

_'I am sorry John Watson, for I love you truly and I was a cagéd bird that you set free. But I am not your first, and you love him with more than your body could ever allow you to love me'_

It's pretentious, but she is no poet and she has no time to really paint. And sometimes, she thinks as she drops her keys with its enamelled key-ring into the pot and closes the door, sometimes pretentious serves a purpose. 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, you read it all!
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Title from Dry the River's "Weights and Measures"


End file.
